16 yr old is sick

I am getting very worried.My son is 16 he is sick so much.He gets panic attacks or is afraid to be around alot of people.He has lots of kids that try to get him to go out but he hardly ever wants to go.He told me once he almost never felt really good.

I am looking for any children who are sick,I just would like to find out how they cope.I don't even know if he has fibro but I am starting to get concerns Ruthie

my son requested last year after getting so sick over his gf...just like i did when i was going thru the beginning part of a divorce...and the fibro..my son has been told he has it in all of the areas...they checked him to neck xrays..etc...

My son was always getting sick starting when he was 12, to the point that I had to limit his sleeping over at friends' or vice-versa... he still got sick a lot anyway.

Then the 1st semester of freshman year of HS he suddenly was incapacitated by anxiety, to the point he could not return to school etc... added to that was depression from it all. He lost the whole 1st semester as a result, took part-time classes 2nd semester, lost the 1st semester of second year again, and again took part-time classes the 2nd semester...

... so at the end of what should have been his sophomore year, he hadn't even completed enough credits to say he was done with freshman year!

By this time he was turning 17 and elected to drop out and get his GED, he was so discouraged. No psychotropics worked for him, in fact he got paradoxical reactions; finally none of us wanted to him to try anything more, including his doctors. He had very bad insomnia and was also sleeping 12+ hours/day altho feeling like he hadn't slept.

Along with the increasing incapacitating anxiety & depression, insomnia, lethargy, and unrefreshed sleep , he started to get more aches and pains... started with carapl tunnel at 13, started getting migrating aches and pains that didn't make sense.

We took him to our internist at 17 as by then we realized he'd lost 10 lbs that he could ill afford to lose; his pulse was 48 and also very low BP altho I don't remember those numbers (and no, he was not an athlete). He had memory problems, brain fog, you name it. I felt very helpless, it was like he was reflecting/mimicking my symptoms (CFIDS, altho no fibro).

The internist ran all the usual tests plus testing for hemochromatosis as we know his paternal grandmother has it and it can cause the same symptoms - but all was 'normal'. The internist said he agreed that there was something wrong, but he had no idea even where to send us next.

I tell you all this because enough of his symptoms just sounded so much like me and so many of us on this board... and I'm sure that had we taken him to an endocrinologist, rheumatologist, etc., he would've ended up with multi-diagnoses including fibro/CFIDS.

But, at that point I had been trying the experimental Marshall Protocol and gotten results, which has led me to beieve I do have some sort of stealth pathogen. Added to that was reading how every week people here have been (still) turning up with positive Lyme tests + associated co-infections.

So, for my son, since he'd spent so much time outside in our woods/pasture on our 40 acres where he grew up, I figured Lyme should be the next thing we looked at, even tho it is not recognized here officially (Georgia).

So I set out to find the best LLMD (Lyme Literate MD), figuring there had to be a good one by/in Atlanta... found a message board where you can get referrals, and was told by people from our area to just go out of state to a clinic in North Carolina, 200 miles away, that knew how to treat it properly.

Well, this is already a long story, but - yes, he turned up positive for Lyme even according to the CDC standards, even tho he never had a bulls-eye rash. It is still active in him, and sadly for him it is turning into a long haul of being treated.

But there is comfort in knowing what is really wrong, as otherwise he was into major denial that anything was really wrong with him. Before the Lyme took hold, he'd been a very motivated, socially outgoing smart kid, and it took it all away - just like CF/FM, he had the lethargy and lack of motivation with all the other symptoms.

The denial caused him to just become angry with himself, thinking he was just 'lazy' etc... getting angry at himself was the only way he could get any energy... at least now he doesn't have to deal with that self-hatred.

Symptoms vary from person to person, but, it sure sounds like your son could have Lyme or another of one of the stealth pathogens, whether mycoplasma or other. LLMDs do test for all of the ones there are tests for, altho the reliability of these isn't too great - so they do treat based on the clinical picture a patient presents.

Please go to ilads.org for a lot of good information and links; there is also a new Lyme board here at ProHealth (click on 'messageboards' up above to find it) - lots of good reading there as well.

I hope this helps, my heart goes out to you!

all the best,
Victoria

PS - one doesn't have to be an 'outside person' either to get ticks... they can get on you from dogs, cats, high grass, trees, sitting on a log, etc.... and deer ticks are so tiny they are all but impossible to see, about the size of the period at the end of the sentence.

Thanks for the replies. My son also got his ged ,He is a computer whiz. We took him for tech school entrance exam and he scored higher than abouve most senoirs graduating,.He was 1 week shy of his 16 birhtday,

He has agreed to anti anxiety medicine or ssri but he says he is not depressed.The pain he has is back,hip,legs and all over pain. HE had stomache problems like diareah. Ruthie